Why Does Unconditional Self-Love Come Hard to Us?

Unconditional self love, by definition, means to love yourself so fully and completely that the ongoings of the entire world and your ether don’t effect the image you have of yourself. Unconditional self love is an unshakeable mountain that shields us from people, the things they do to us, say to us and about us. At the end of the day, through everything, all that matters is the way we talk to ourselves.

This society is such that it breeds on our low self esteem and lack of self confidence. Our Achilles’ heel is found, subtle remarks are casually thrown about like confetti, and thus begins a potentially life-long rollercoaster ride of healing. This is where I ask myself, who told us that our insecurity needs to be an insecurity? Who told us that we are too short or too tall, our teeth too crooked, our face too spotty, our hair too frizzy, that we are too thin, too fat, too loud, too quiet, too ambitious? That we are too feminine, too masculine or not ladylike enough, not man enough? Who told us that we need to cut and chisel ourselves a certain way to be welcomed? Welcomed by whom? The society? The same society which bullies us into believing that we will truly never be enough no matter what we do and who we are.

So why not be exactly who we want to be? Why not love ourselves for who we are in this moment, and be excited for who we will become? Why wait eternally for approval, validation, or green signal from a society that is built on our very desperate need for it? If we will never be enough, regardless of how much we trim and squeeze ourselves to fit into society’s mould, why even bother in the first place?

We spend years at war with ourselves, fighting against our inner desires, changing who we are to better fit in with the world that is characteristically a chameleon. My question is, for what? To try to gain the acceptance we will never have unless we are gentle and shrewd, tall and short, skinny and curvy, ambitious and self-sacrificing all at once at the same time. In our mortal existence, the word for it is ‘impossible.’

Self-love is the modern act of rebellion against the anarchy of unrealistic societal standards. Self-love is truly what makes life worth living. If you love yourself unconditionally, are your biggest supporter and cheerleader, and strive to stand by yourself no matter hell or high tide, you have achieved something more than three-quarters of the world has failed to. It is easier said than done, the world is proof that love is hard work. But self love, it requires a whole different kind of dedication. It is like swimming against the current, like walking Eastward in a East wind; the dirt and debris will hurt your eyes, but in the end, East is where the sun shines.

Self-love is the key to survive in this world that pulls apart our threads, scrutinises our way of existing, and compels us to turn our wings into claws. And in a world like that, we have to love ourselves enough to drop the dead weight of its unreasonable expectations, turn our face towards the sun, and soar higher.